What the Republican roots ARE and what they SHOULD BE are two different things.

When I started out studying the ideas of human societies, it occurred to me that a political party with a libertarian philosophy was an oxymoron on a very basic level. While I left the Libertarian Party behind on this basis (among others), the same was still true for Republicans, insofar as they had any libertarian ideas. Unfortunately, unless I abandoned political activity altogether, that was all that was left.

I had hopes for Reagan, but as you point out, the government was larger when he left office. Sure, he had Democrats in Congress, but I found out that Reagan's own budgets, while smaller, didn't shrink government either.

I had hopes in 1994, too, but the House's ideas foundered on the Senate's inertia. Most of the Contract with America never even made it as far as Clinton's desk. When Gingrich left, so did the only real philosophical basis the House had. The results over the following years can actually be graphed from that point. One guy keeping it real. How pathetic is that for an entire political party?

Yeah, I'm a faction of a very few. I'm not arrogant enough to say "a faction of one." This board isn't the entire universe, after all, and many people feel the same way I do about things. Probably more than you think. Unfortunately, by the very nature of the beast, they don't flock to politics. "I know how the country should be run" is the foundation of a different philosophy, and our system of government selects for those who have "The Answer" for how our lives should be lived.

So our seats of government fill up with those who want a hammerlock on our existence. Democrats AND Republicans. A few years back I could satisfy myself that Republicans were the best of two bad choices, but in recent years, I look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but it's becoming impossible to say which is which.

Many years ago my original interest in colonization of space grew from the need for a frontier when things start to rot out. A place where people who don't want to run other people's lives, or let other people run theirs, could go. Frontiers have served this purpose for thousands of years.

That didn't pan out.

I've gone as far West in the U.S. as I can without falling into the Pacific, and the problems here are actually worse than elsewhere. I'm left hoping for a philosophical renaissance in the ideas of government--it has happened before--but it's pretty slim right now.